Rain Forests

Scientists have for the first time found high levels of ozone and acid rain over thousands of miles of virgin rain forests of Central Africa, the New York Times said in a report from Freiburg, West Germany. It said the discovery by separate teams of scientists from France and West Germany was particularly alarming because the pollution exists throughout the year and is comparable to levels found in industrialized Europe and North America. The scientists said the pollution is largely caused by fires set by farmers and herdsmen to clear shrubs and to stimulate the growth of crops and grass.

The Los Angeles Zoo's new Rainforest of the Americas exhibit doesn't open until Tuesday, but it is already filled with commotion. Dwarf caimans and a giant bird-eating spider were exploring the creature comforts of their enclosures this week. Construction workers were inspecting thermostats and water pumps. The $19-million exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens is the last in a series of major projects built under Phase 1 of the 47-year-old facility's master plan.

High in the mountains of northeastern Australia, scientists have discovered three intriguing animals that are brand new to science, and you can see all three of them in the photo gallery above. They include the bizarre-looking leaf-tailed gecko ( Saltuarius eximius ) with its giant eyes and broad leaf-shaped tail; the golden shade skink ( Saproscincus saltus ), which resembles a short snake with legs; and an elegant little frog ( Cophixalus petrophilus ) that spends most of its life in the cool moist cracks between the black granite boulders strewn across the top of the mountain range.

February 22, 2006 | On the Web For more letters see www.latimes.com/letters.

Re "Rescuers Hear Only Silence From Sea of Mud," Feb. 19 The reporting of the mudslide disaster in the Philippines fails to address the causes of this catastrophe and seems to treat it as an act of God, thus absolving people of any responsibility. Failure to recognize and correct the human involvement in this tragedy will just lead to thousands more deaths in the future. In 2001, a team of scientists from Humboldt University of Berlin reported that forest cover on Leyte Island had decreased markedly since the late 1980s because of illegal logging with the support of government officials.

The world's tropical forests, thought to be vital to life on Earth, are vanishing at a rate twice as fast as that estimated 10 years ago, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said last week. First estimates from the agency's 1990 Forest Resources Assessment showed that the annual rate of deforestation rose sharply from 37,000 square miles in 1980 to 66,000 square miles 10 years later--an area about the size of Oklahoma every year.

For Beverly Revness and Janice Tarr, the school year that ended Friday was a long, difficult and tumultuous one, but comments from students like 10-year-old Natasha Roje give them hope that it was not all in vain. "I wonder, if I have children," Natasha told a classroom visitor recently, "if they'll ever get to know about the rain forests, or if they have to see pictures and stuff." Small-Scale Triumph Revness and Tarr, teachers at Kenter Canyon Elementary School in Brentwood, have spent the year raising the environmental consciousness of their fourth- and fifth-graders with a joint project for the two classes.

The Senate voted Wednesday to restrict logging and set aside 673,000 acres as a protected area in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. To preserve old-growth parts of the vast forest, the bill would modify two long-term logging contracts and end a $40-million annual incentive for high-level harvesting in the area. The 99-0 vote was cast after the senators set aside an amendment to require the U.S.

Destruction of the world's tropical forests is occurring nearly 50% faster than the best previous scientific estimates showed, with enough trees being lost each year to cover the state of Washington, the World Resources Institute said Thursday. Between 40 million and 50 million acres are lost annually, according to new satellite measurements of vanishing timberland, with the biggest losses occurring in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Costa Rica.

JUNEAU, Alaska - I'd been told she'd had a little work done. Who can blame her? She was turning 50, and her life had been hard. The miles were starting to show. But after an $8-million update, she was as good as new and ready to celebrate - and I got to join the party. Meet the Malaspina: Fifty years ago she made the voyage that launched the Alaska Marine Highway System, a ferry network that opened the state's isolated coastal towns to tourism and gave residents easier access to the outside world.

Deforestaton is propeling fast changes in evolution, a study of the Brazilian rain forest suggests. Researchers found that in areas where populations of large-billed, fruit-eating birds, such as toucans, have been driven out because of deforestation, palm trees have evolved to produce smaller and less successful seeds. The Brazilian scientists collected more than 9,000 seeds from 22 palm populations in patches of rain forest that had been fragmented by coffee and sugar cane development during the 1800s.

New music in Manila is a too-little-looked-at phenomenon. We've been missing something. For a Monday Evening Concerts program, built around the U.S. premieres of works by two Philippine composers, Zipper Concert Hall became, in Jonas Baes' "Patangis-Buwaya," a rain forest. The sounds made by a quartet of low winds and whistles and stones handed out to the audience were so uncannily authentic that all that was said to be missing were the mosquitoes. But the big piece of the night, José Maceda's "Strata," proved an even more peculiar sonic and spiritual wonder.

TIKAL NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala - The woman in the shorts shrieked, grabbed her ankle and crumpled to the ground as though she'd been shot. And in a sense she had. "A bullet ant," surmised José Elias, our unflappable guide. "If they sting you, the pain will last 24 hours. Take care. " We left the stricken woman to her friends and plunged deeper into Guatemala's steamy jungle. Birds sang madly, chaotically. Emerald billed toucans alighted in the treetops. The spooky cry of a howler monkey echoed through the forest.

Deforestation and climate change may sound like familiar concerns to the modern ear. But a team of French scientists is arguing that even 3,000 years ago, humans may have played a role in transforming the Central African rain forest into the savannas we see today. As Bantu farmers expanded south and east into the rain forest in search of fertile agricultural land, they may have created savanna "corridors" that cut into the forest and helped turn that lush landscape into drier grassland, according to a study published online this week in the journal Science.

It's official: Barbie has broken up with Asia Pulp & Paper Co. Responding to a campaign by environmental activists at Greenpeace, toy giant Mattel Inc., maker of the famed Barbie doll line, announced Wednesday that it would stop buying paper and packaging that the environmental group has linked to rain forest destruction in Indonesia. The El Segundo company said it would tell suppliers to avoid wood fiber from companies "that are known to be involved in deforestation. " Among those companies, Greenpeace said in a statement, is Asia Pulp & Paper.

Howler monkeys, crocodiles, toucans, parrots and lots of birds star in this 10-day trip to Costa Rica sponsored by the Greater L.A. Zoo Assn. The naturalist-led expedition explores Volcan Poas National Park to learn about active volcanoes, the Monteverde Cloud Forest mountain reserve, Carara National Park on the Pacific Coast and a rain forest at Braulio Carrillo, with an aerial tram that takes you into the tree canopy. A tour of capital city San Jose also is included. When: Costa Rica: Nature's Treasure House runs from Nov. 11-20.

Responding to pressure from Greenpeace this week, toy maker Mattel Inc. said it would direct its suppliers to stop buying wood products from Asia Pulp & Paper, a Singapore company that has clear-cut vast swaths of Indonesia's rain forest. As the environmental group's global campaign against Mattel gained traction, the El Segundo company said on its Facebook page: "Mattel does not support deforestation nor does it contract directly with Sinar Mas/APP. We purchase packaging materials from a variety of suppliers and it is not the normal course of business to dictate where suppliers source materials.